Snake
by Chiriru
Summary: She's tired of running. Post Covenant. Chloe centric. Slight Chlark?


Title: Snake  
By: Chiri  
Spoilers: Up to Covenant  
Summary: "She's tired of running."  
Rating: uhm... PG? PG-13?  
AN: Written during a 'bout of insomnia. Tig and Mav said I had to post. So posting I am.  
  
She can't pinpoint when this inner turmoil started, but she's got a feeling it happened long before words like "Smallville" and "meteor rock" and "Clark Kent" entered her everyday vocabulary.  
  
But even Chloe will admit that those things have only made it worse.  
  
Chloe wonders if she's been tainted since the day she was born. Marked with some kind of invisible emblem on the her head - proclaiming her as someone to be unloved, uncared for.  
  
It would explain why her mother ran off.  
  
Why Clark followed suit at the Spring Formal.  
  
The problem with being a city girl in a town like Smallville was that it was too easy to take too much of it at face value. She hadn't seen the snakes crawling through the corn fields, waiting to bite the ankles of whomever walked too closely.  
  
Chloe knows the King Cobra has latched on to her somehow. Perhaps it was the smell of Metropolis clinging to her (or did she merely try to cling to it?) that allowed him to slither through the maize no matter how lost in it she became.  
  
Occasionally, usually, and this was the good thing about Smallville, a helping hand showed up right on time pulling her out of the patch and onto the road again. Chloe has learned to curb questions about how he finds her and is just thankful that Clark does.  
  
Only now, when he pulls her out of one field they end up running into another one.  
  
And another. And another. And _another_.  
  
Thin leaves cut her arms and face; they itch like a thousand tiny paper cuts and her bare feet hit the dry soil. They keep running. Her feet crack and bleed leaving a messy path straight to them. They keep running. Dust in the air so thick she can't breathe and all she feels is pain and the iron grip Clark has on her hand.  
  
They keep running.  
  
Sometimes, she falls down.  
  
In the past he'd carefully set her up again, brush the dirt off, maintain the shaky status quo. Only now, she's bleeding and he doesn't have the time to make sure she's okay. He pulls her to her feet; she realizes Clark doesn't i>care /i> if she's okay as long as she's i>alive /i>.  
  
Chloe doesn't _feel_ alive.  
  
Sweating hands in the hot sun as they keep running until she falls down once more. Her hand slips out of his... and he doesn't notice.  
  
It wasn't from lack of trying, her knees just gave out. She fell on top of herself; her left leg lets out a loud crack and she feels nauseated. Her body simply decided it was done with trying so hard and accomplishing nothing. Of failing simply because she didn't know how to win. Of all the dust and the sweat and the intense heat that's killing her slowly; her eyes burn.  
  
She's tired of running.  
  
Chloe wants it to end.  
  
The eyes are narrow slits and beady; his chest pumped up in glory as he strikes. His venom burns her face, his fangs pump poison in her neck, and she doesn't scream.  
  
She just accepts.  
  
Her skin bubbles. Puckers. Itches. She wants to claw it all off.  
  
Her heart sounds funny. Like it's skipping a down beat. Maybe, like it's skipping all the down beats.  
  
So do Clark's feet. He's realized she's gone. He's lost her. A quiet padding as he runs back and circles and shouts her name trying to find her. It's too much effort to say anything back to him.  
  
The ground is surprisingly cool.  
  
He's overhead and looks at her in horror. Like it's all his fault. Like there was something he could of done. If she wasn't so tired, she'd scoff -- there was nothing anyone could of done.  
  
Part of her tries to point out the snake coming after him as he bends down to touch the swollen markings on her neck. It's useless.  
  
She closes her eyes and tries to focus on breathing.  
  
When she opens them, all she sees is Clark. And then he's fighting. And struggling, trying to strangle the reptile that's coiling around him. Part of her says that cobras don't do that. She doesn't know why that's in her head.  
  
Chloe wants to tell him no, to stop, that it's useless. That he needs to keep running. That the snake will kill him if he doesn't run. It comes out as a gurgle and all she tastes is metal in her mouth.  
  
----  
  
When she opens her eyes, she's pinned down by medical equipment. Clark's there, in flannel. Asleep, black hair messier than normal, hanging in his face. Her skin feels hot, so _hot_.  
  
She gurgles. There is a tube in her mouth, but she doesn't know if she'd be able to talk regardless. It doesn't matter; Clark's up and at her side in an instant looking at her with pained eyes.  
  
The look he gave her in the field.  
  
She tries to tell him that it's not his fault. He couldn't stop it. Even to her own ears, it sounds like a lot of gasping and wheezing. It sounds pathetic.  
  
Clark seems to get it though.  
  
His hand is in her hair - she thinks it's her hair, she doesn't really know. She just feels uncomfortably hot all over. Like she's been dipped in a pot of boiling water and scalded in every last place. She tries to lean into the touch, tries to show that she appreciates his concern.  
  
There's not much leaning she can do.  
  
Clark speaks and it comes to her in pieces. "Trap...bomb...your 't save...hospital...DOA...my fault...so sorry...." Something in her shrivels and dies and Chloe hates herself twice as much for not being able to cry about it. Perhaps barely breathing has something to do with it.  
  
She still feels guilty.  
  
Clark looks like he owns the emotion when his eyes glaze over.  
  
"Delayed...accident...Kawache...biological father..." She's got enough presence of mind to try to look over the Jonathan Kent who looks about as bogged down with medical equipment as she feels. "Coma...who knows....likely permanent."  
  
She tries to reach for his hand; her own cracks in pain. Chloe stops as Clark waves a copy of the Planet in front of her. It looks crumpled, like it's old news. Chloe thinks it's funny, the things one notices.  
  
The article is big, and clear. Lionel Luthor. Dead. Killed in his cell. Date is July 28th.  
  
The last date Chloe remembers is sometime in mid-May.  
  
When she looks at Clark, he looks at his hands. The corn and the snake come back to her and she tries to...the question burns on the tip of her tongue... He didn't. He _couldn't_. The heart monitor blimps alarmingly fast in her ears as she tries to sit up.  
  
She needs to know who.  
  
Clark says one word and she doesn't know if it's a comfort or not.  
  
"Lex."  
  
The room would be silent except of the whirring and beeping of machines. It was a dead and stuffy weight. The room is coated in the scent of hot-house flowers and surface cleaner. She tries to wiggle her toes and finds out they don't move. She looks down...and then up; her left leg is in traction.  
  
Chloe hates hospitals.  
  
She looks over at him, trying to process her thoughts; trying to come to terms with whatever had happened in reality and what had happened in the justification of her own mind. Swallowing thickly, she turns as much as she can towards him.  
  
"Clark."  
  
It's low, raspy. If she was up to normal standards, she might even call it guttural. It's as loud as she can make it right now and it barely audible over the consistent 'boop' of her heart monitor.  
  
It's enough.  
  
His eyes can't lie. They are hard and wet and it hurts her to hold his gaze because Clark i>never /i> looks like this. Chloe refuses to look away, refuses to blink. She gulps a little and feels ungodly pain as her skin moves so slowly.  
  
She wants the truth.  
  
It takes him several minutes pacing before he can start, and even then she can tell the omit ions. No ordinary father could simultaneously nearly kill Jonathan Kent while keeping Clark back; even if he could, there was no sane reason to use the caves to do it. There were time lapses also; there was no way he could of even approximated getting to her that fast.  
  
Except, she relents internally when she looks in his eyes, that he did. She'll know how someday.  
  
When he's ready to tell her.  
  
When she's mature enough to hear it.  
  
"I thought..." his fingers tap lightly on her cheek and she tries not to wince. For him. His hand shakes. His voice does too. "I found your dad, and then you.. and I thought you were -- you _were_..."  
  
He can't say it.  
  
Chloe doesn't really want him to.  
  
She closes her eyes when he withdraws his hand.  
  
--  
  
The serpent is dead at her feet when she looks up.  
  
He's there, a ripped part of his shirt in hand. Carefully down the slopes of her cheeks to her chin, he wipes off the dirt. She presses a hand to her neck; no longer are there puffy red welts where she had been bitten.  
  
Chloe looked at her hands. She looks at his.  
  
No blood.  
  
Somehow, it makes her feel relieved.  
  
She runs her hands along her face and strangely feels... _clean_. Rejuvenated. And she can't remember _ever_ feeling like this; like there _isn't_ some strange marking on her to single her out.  
  
Looking over her shoulder, she sees the sun. It's orange and hot. And so close. It should burn; it doesn't. She still feels hot, but it's fading.  
  
Clark, however, looks worse for wear. His shirt is torn and he's got a long gashes along his chest and on his face; the skin has puckered hideously and blood has dried to form thick, jagged scars. When she asks about it, he shrugs it off and tries to wander off back into the stalks.  
  
Back into the maize.  
  
Back off to battle snakes.  
  
Without her.  
  
_Alone_.  
  
Standing up, she grabs his hand. He lets her, but she knows he's not really caring where. Chloe honestly doesn't know where she's going other than they can't go back to where they were. Too much had happened.  
  
The field is cool as Chloe steps through the rows. Time after time, he had reach a hand out and pull her out of the maize.  
  
It was her turn now.  
  
She wanders until their feet step upon the pavement. The sun is pleasantly warm and bright; it's in her eyes.  
  
Chloe turns towards the east, the sun bright behind her, and her city stands in the distance; the one that had once made her a target was now the target itself. Infested with it's own form of vermin. She squeezes Clark's hand, trying to nudge him in the right direction.  
  
Ask him a silent question.  
  
Searching for reassurance.  
  
Eventually, he gives her a lop-sided grin and she laughs aloud.  
  
She can't believe she's doing this. She can't believe she _wants_ to do this. Chloe makes sure that _this_ time she's got a death-grip on his hand.  
  
And then, they start running again.  
  
(end)


End file.
